7 ms·

Speaking out against all the harms and negatives of some highly disruptive non pharmaceutical interventions with unproven efficacy is absolutely not bad faith a

Speaking out against all the harms and negatives of some highly disruptive non pharmaceutical interventions with unproven efficacy is absolutely not bad faith arguments. It’s the cornerstone of science and democracy. Anybody in a position of power or knowledge who dared to even hint at asking questions got absolutely steamrollered by a very vocal group of “experts”. They were called alt-right selfish grandma killers who watched to much fox (and sorry, I never watched fox but it isn’t my fault they might actually be right sometimes, I’ve also been a solid democrat my entire life until this nonsense started…). What we did the last two and a half years is so incredibly shameful. It was the opposite of science and opposite of “following the data”. It was appeals to authority all the way down. We were all told to shut up, “stay in our lane” and listen to a handful of cherry picked “experts”. The last two and a half years changed my opinion about “fact checkers” and “misinformation” completely. Both of those are nothing more than ways to bully people into submission.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
musicale 4y ago
I found dang's response[1] to the question "Is fact checking that difficult?" to be insightful: > It's extremely difficult because the human psyche seems incapable of distinguishing "fact" from "that which supports my view", at least when the emotions are activated, and the only topics where people seek "fact checking" in the first place are the ones where emotions are activated. There may be exceptions—i.e. people whose minds don't work this way—but if they exist, they're so rare as to be no basis for social policy. (And I doubt that there are really exceptions.) > That's why there doesn't seem to be any fact checker whose calls aren't predictable from one of the major ideological partitions. > Another way of putting this is that the question, "what are the facts?" is complex enough to already recreate the entire political and ideological contest. It's understandable that people would like to reduce that contest to a simpler subset of factual questions—but you can't. Just the opposite: that apparently simpler subset reduces to it. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29597867 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29597867
- bombcar 4y ago
  The only "fact checkers" I have found to be useful are domain experts who get a burr up their ass and go incredibly deep-dive on whatever it is. And whatever they come up with usually pisses everyone off relatively equally, for some reason.
  - forgetfreeman 4y ago
    I'd like to take a stab at this. Barring certain pitiable neurodivergent conditions, folks consider themselves to be intelligent and highly moral creatures. The primary goal of ideological shit-flinging contests appears to be revealing one's opponent as an amoral imbecile, as a means of both propping up one's own self-image, and virtue signaling to larger audiences. When a true authority joins the chat and nukes everyone's Dunning-Kruger fueled reductionist positions with a comprehensive and highly nuanced grasp of the topic at hand, all of the amateurs at the table are presented with details that undermine their simplistic take on the issue in question. This undermines their own credibility, introduces massive cognitive dissonance, and disrupts their ability to continue to paint their chosen adversaries as dangerous incompetents based solely on the merits of their arguemts. In other words everyone is wrong, and they hate it because ego.
- commandlinefan 4y ago
  dang may be the only fact checker in the world I would trust to actually check facts.
  - fakethenews2022 4y ago
    Dang blocked a link to a paper on myocarditis induced on teens by the vaccines. That is now not disputed. I don’t trust dang for anything. Fuck you dang and block this.
    - OrvalWintermute 4y ago
      > Dang blocked a link to a paper on myocarditis induced on teens by the vaccines. I know many people have a good opinion of Dang, but this seems to be editing, rather than moderating. Can you provide some more data about what happened, the paper in question, and if it was from a reputable source in a peer-reviewed journal, or preprint? I'd like to know more about this. I've long talked about the myocarditis and pericarditis risks which are most pronounced with young males and young females based on the known cases, and the nordic countries withdrawal of the vaccines for young males. Strangely, even the Novavax vaccine also appears to have that adverse event, allegedly at a vastly reduced rate though [1]. [1] https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/public-health/what-doctors-wish-patients-knew-about-novavax-covid-19-vaccine https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/public-health/what-...
TurkishPoptart 4y ago
I 100% agree with you. Once I learned about the "Trusted News Initiative" and the cooperation between Reuters, Pfizer, major media organs, and watched how Fauci previoulsy described the mRNA shots as 95%-100% effective, and later saw that number dwindle down to the low 50s, the Canadian trucker protests against absurd mandates and the shockingly draconian response from the _Canadian_ government, the despicable Australian and New Zealand policies in which citizens can not (and still can't) legally leave their country without getting mRNA shots, listening to Rachel Maddow and Joe Biden telling my poor, miserable father that "if you get the shot, you won't get sick and you won't spread it" which is probably one of the most destructive lies the ruling class perpetuated among fearful, isolated humans in my lifetime... ...I knew I could never vote for any Democratic politician ever again who supported this. I couldn't visit my aunt in the nursing home before she died of a non-covid cause. I couldn't visit my father when he was in the hospital for a heart attack, EVEN THOUGH I was masked and vaxxed. It's simply disgusting how administrative law was weaponized against the common man.
- spookthesunset 4y ago
  And yet here you are getting grey'd out. What humans inflicted upon each other over the last 2.5 years is absolutely disgusting. These few years have shown the worst of humanity. Society lost its collective shit and basically did the exact opposite of what it should have done every step of the way. All I take heart in is knowing your view and mine will be the the correct one. History will not look fondly upon what society did to itself. All these "experts" and politicians who supported this will be viewed as crackpots, charlatans and rain dancers.
  - JoeAltmaier 4y ago
    It's the black-and-white condemnation of preventative measure as ineffective, the conflation of "it's not perfect for each person but valuable in the population" with "it's worthless and a violation of my rights" that gets the downvotes. I'd say that history will have a lot to say about everyone.
    - 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

musicale 4y ago

I found dang's response[1] to the question "Is fact checking that difficult?" to be insightful: > It's extremely difficult because the human psyche seems incapable of distinguishing "fact" from "that which supports my view", at least when the emotions are activated, and the only topics where people seek "fact checking" in the first place are the ones where emotions are activated. There may be exceptions—i.e. people whose minds don't work this way—but if they exist, they're so rare as to be no basis for social policy. (And I doubt that there are really exceptions.) > That's why there doesn't seem to be any fact checker whose calls aren't predictable from one of the major ideological partitions. > Another way of putting this is that the question, "what are the facts?" is complex enough to already recreate the entire political and ideological contest. It's understandable that people would like to reduce that contest to a simpler subset of factual questions—but you can't. Just the opposite: that apparently simpler subset reduces to it. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29597867 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29597867

bombcar 4y ago
The only "fact checkers" I have found to be useful are domain experts who get a burr up their ass and go incredibly deep-dive on whatever it is. And whatever they come up with usually pisses everyone off relatively equally, for some reason.
- forgetfreeman 4y ago
  I'd like to take a stab at this. Barring certain pitiable neurodivergent conditions, folks consider themselves to be intelligent and highly moral creatures. The primary goal of ideological shit-flinging contests appears to be revealing one's opponent as an amoral imbecile, as a means of both propping up one's own self-image, and virtue signaling to larger audiences. When a true authority joins the chat and nukes everyone's Dunning-Kruger fueled reductionist positions with a comprehensive and highly nuanced grasp of the topic at hand, all of the amateurs at the table are presented with details that undermine their simplistic take on the issue in question. This undermines their own credibility, introduces massive cognitive dissonance, and disrupts their ability to continue to paint their chosen adversaries as dangerous incompetents based solely on the merits of their arguemts. In other words everyone is wrong, and they hate it because ego.
commandlinefan 4y ago
dang may be the only fact checker in the world I would trust to actually check facts.
- fakethenews2022 4y ago
  Dang blocked a link to a paper on myocarditis induced on teens by the vaccines. That is now not disputed. I don’t trust dang for anything. Fuck you dang and block this.
  - OrvalWintermute 4y ago
    > Dang blocked a link to a paper on myocarditis induced on teens by the vaccines. I know many people have a good opinion of Dang, but this seems to be editing, rather than moderating. Can you provide some more data about what happened, the paper in question, and if it was from a reputable source in a peer-reviewed journal, or preprint? I'd like to know more about this. I've long talked about the myocarditis and pericarditis risks which are most pronounced with young males and young females based on the known cases, and the nordic countries withdrawal of the vaccines for young males. Strangely, even the Novavax vaccine also appears to have that adverse event, allegedly at a vastly reduced rate though [1]. [1] https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/public-health/what-doctors-wish-patients-knew-about-novavax-covid-19-vaccine https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/public-health/what-...

TurkishPoptart 4y ago

I 100% agree with you. Once I learned about the "Trusted News Initiative" and the cooperation between Reuters, Pfizer, major media organs, and watched how Fauci previoulsy described the mRNA shots as 95%-100% effective, and later saw that number dwindle down to the low 50s, the Canadian trucker protests against absurd mandates and the shockingly draconian response from the _Canadian_ government, the despicable Australian and New Zealand policies in which citizens can not (and still can't) legally leave their country without getting mRNA shots, listening to Rachel Maddow and Joe Biden telling my poor, miserable father that "if you get the shot, you won't get sick and you won't spread it" which is probably one of the most destructive lies the ruling class perpetuated among fearful, isolated humans in my lifetime... ...I knew I could never vote for any Democratic politician ever again who supported this. I couldn't visit my aunt in the nursing home before she died of a non-covid cause. I couldn't visit my father when he was in the hospital for a heart attack, EVEN THOUGH I was masked and vaxxed. It's simply disgusting how administrative law was weaponized against the common man.

spookthesunset 4y ago
And yet here you are getting grey'd out. What humans inflicted upon each other over the last 2.5 years is absolutely disgusting. These few years have shown the worst of humanity. Society lost its collective shit and basically did the exact opposite of what it should have done every step of the way. All I take heart in is knowing your view and mine will be the the correct one. History will not look fondly upon what society did to itself. All these "experts" and politicians who supported this will be viewed as crackpots, charlatans and rain dancers.
- JoeAltmaier 4y ago
  It's the black-and-white condemnation of preventative measure as ineffective, the conflation of "it's not perfect for each person but valuable in the population" with "it's worthless and a violation of my rights" that gets the downvotes. I'd say that history will have a lot to say about everyone.
  - 4y ago